Urban Exploring: Turn the Tide To Schöneweide

Flow Cafe, Schoeneweide

Last week, while cycling through the eastern borough of Schoeneweide for the first time in years, I saw streetart, scrap art, industrial-residential hybrids, new pedestrian bridges, squares and all kinds of sophisticated little urban touches that I have never seen in the utilitarian streets near my place, before. 

As they race relentlessly away from the Mitte, gentrification's stylistic enhancements seem to have shot straight past poor, fugly (yet still not managing to avoid those rent hikes) Lichtenberg, and carried on to the admittedly more scenic environs around Schoeneweide, where they have settled in like a hand in a glove. The area is a nice mix of natural open spaces, derelict buildings and cute little residential streets that seem to have survived by sheer virtue of the fact that nobody remembered they even existed, until recently. 

Stuff to do in this area include the Flow Kaffeehaus, the Funkhaus, and nearby Sisyphos. There are also a fair few GDR ruins to explore and, further east, there are rambling paths along the river and parkland. Water based activities are also obviously an option in this riverside area, too, if that sort of thing floats your boat. Just don't expect to go shopping or find haute cuisine, here. That sort of thing requires more cash than this proletarian borough likes to spend, if the number of people clustered around budget Imbiss and Spatis was anything to go by! 

Here are a few pics I snapped while I was there... enjoy them. Do you live in Schoeneweide? Please let me know what you think of the area in the box below!

Easiest way to find the Flow Kaffeehaus? Look for the wrecked car out front.

Above and below are two photos from inside a ruined GDR building that we explored in Schoeneweide ca. 2012

Is this Berlin's only dedicated, pedestrian footbridge? We need more of these damn things!